yoga and thought from Theo Wildcroft

Losing it all

This is not easy reading if you are trying to lose a lot of weight, and, of course, it’s just my best analysis of the situation, having spent a number of years considering and watching and reading articles and so forth. So turn away if you don’t want to hear, but I think an awareness of the evidence is better than ignorance. And hold on til the end of the post, for the really good news is coming, I promise! Notice, I’m calling this evidence – it’s what I have found so far, worldwide, but there’s a lot more research to be done. That given, and with the usual caveats that we all know someone who knows someone who is an exception to the research, because there is a lot of individuality and diversity in human expressions of embodiment. Anyway.

That’s why people give in – because it’s a Herculean effort to lose the weight, but then it’s this hard, forever, and they can’t beat that in the same way as they can a half-marathon in 6 months.

Funnily enough, yoga might be one of the things that has a chance of helping, but it has to be the slow kind, which slows your metabolism, and decreases appetite – that’s the crucial thing, and only just starting to be understood. Or at least researched. For years we thought people got thinner doing yoga because their metabolisms sped up. Not true. Go figure. This might be because yoga decreases the amount of adrenaline and cortisol and other such physical manifestations of stress in your body. It leaves you more of a space to breathe, to think about your choices in the everyday. It puts a gap between your desire and your fulfilment of that desire. When some part of you really wants a chocolate biscuit, another part of you starts to pop up and ask if what you really want instead is an early night – because your mild and semi-permanent levels of exhaustion are what’s really fueling that need for sugar.

So here’s what might be happening – health science’s best guess as a huge generalisation, if you like. People are bouncing down to a low weight, with extreme levels of personal effort that are little short of heroism. They’re not managing to keep it off, because everything in their body is crying out to put much of the weight back on, yet once they hit that target weight, social and interpersonal support dwindles and they’re on their own. This is just the way we are – so much more likely to cheer the person who says ‘I lost 8lbs in three weeks!’ than the one who says ‘I’ve not put the 8lbs I lost last month back on!’

As ever, each body is individual, (and a colony too) and each person will find their own way through. But I see the pain of those whose heroic fight to sustain major weight loss ends in injury and depression, whilst the world around them treats them as weak-willed idiots. Fat-shaming is real, it’s sick and it’s cruel, not only in what it says, but in the holding out of near-impossible goals like they were easy, and the persistent whisper that you’re on your own and it’s All Your Fault.

I hope if you’re still reading, that this helps you understand yourself and those around you better. More people need to start talking about it. I’m aware it won’t make me popular in certain circles. Who knows, I might even lose friends over it. But I think it should be said anyway, and I think that’s kind of part of my job now.